The Russian war against the Ukraine has not only come at a
tremendous human cost, it destroyed vital natural resources,
including forests, soil and water and fragile ecosystems that
will take decades to recover or repair. The implications of
damage and toxic contamination from fighting are especially grave
given that Ukraine is home to 35 per cent of Europe’s
biodiversity and around a quarter of the earth’s chernozem, a
rich, highly fertile soil type. As the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reports that hundreds of
protected areas are or have been under occupation, including up
to 23 national parks and nature and biosphere reserves (SIPRI).
Pursuing accountability and restitution for conflict related
environmental damages has long been a neglected issue in
international law and the prosecution of war crimes. And while
recent efforts, to strengthen the international normative and
legal framework, both, at the level of the United Nations and
Humanitarian Agencies, such as the Red Cross, much remains to be
done. There is growing pressure to include ‘ecocide’ as an
international crime under the Rome Statute. Yet the International
Criminal Court does not currently recognize the mass destruction
of flora and fauna, or the poisoning of air or water resources as
an international crime.
Will the war in the Ukraine be a turning point for the lack of
accountability for violence against nature in armed conflict? And
what are the main challenges in documenting and assembling
evidence for possible court proceedings and to better protect and
enforce reparations for environmental war crimes?
Lennard de Klerk is Dutch national with 25+
years experience in climate change topics in Central and Eastern
Europe. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he started
an initiative to estimate the environmental impact of this war,
including its long term effects on carbon emissions. Lennard
graduated from Delft University of Technology and during his
career lived in Moscow, Berlin, Kyiv and Budapest . He currently
runs a climate neutral holiday resort (Irota EcoLodge) in
Northern Hungary.
Stavros-Evdokimos Pantazopoulos is a
post-doctoral researcher with the Toxic Crimes Project of the
Erik Castrén Institute at the University of Helsinki, and a
Researcher with the Asser Institute. He is currently visiting the
Law School of the University of Athens. Formerly, Stavros was the
Legal and Policy Analyst of the Conflict and Environment
Observatory, a UK-based NGO aiming to raise awareness of the
environmental impacts of armed conflict. He obtained his PhD
degree in international law from the European University
Institute and his scholarship focuses on the legal aspects of
environmental protection during and after armed conflict.
Monika Halkort is a social scientist and
journalist in Vienna. She currently also teaches at the
University of Applied Arts as part of the master program ‚Applied
Human Rights and the Arts`. Next to her academic work, she
regularly produces contributions for the Ö1 programs Radiokolleg,
Hörbilder and Diagonal. The thematic focus of her work is the
historical interconnections of colonialism, technology and
knowledge production and how they continue to shape ideas of
sustainability, planetary thinking and environmental justice
today.
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